and effectually baffled by the ingenuity and persevering courage of the
enemy. After their earthen mounds had been completed, the English, on
St. Mary's eve, made a simultaneous assault both by land and by sea.
Whilst their force, led by the bravest of their captains, and carrying
with them, besides their usual offensive arms, the ladders, crows,
pick-axes, and other assistances for an escalade, rushed onwards to the
walls with the sound of their trumpets, and the display of innumerable
banners, a large vessel, prepared for the purpose, was towed towards the
town from the mouth of the river. She was filled with armed soldiers,
a party of whom were placed in her boat drawn up mid-mast high; whilst
to the bow of the boat was fixed a species of drawbridge, which it was
intended to drop upon the wall, and thus afford a passage from the
vessel into the town. Yet these complicated preparations failed of
success, although seconded by the greatest gallantry; and the English,
after being baffled in every attempt to fix their ladders and maintain
themselves upon the walls, were compelled to retire, leaving their
vessel to be burnt by the Scots, who slew many of her crew, and made
prisoner the engineer who superintended and directed the attack.

This unsuccessful attack was, after five days' active preparation,
followed by another still more desperate, in which the besiegers
made use of a huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several
platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who
were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which
they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with
this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering,
they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a
height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the
town; and, instead of a single vessel, as on the former occasion, a
squadron of ships, with their top castles manned by picked bodies of